from Part II - Forms and Genres
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 October 2025
Katharine Bradley is responsible for the now well-known sonnets admired as the work of Michael Field. Many are collected in Wild Honey from Various Thyme (1908), a volume in preparation since at least 1893, though Bradley had been writing sonnets since 1869. This chapter details some of her earlier work, noting especially her use of the art sonnet and the memorial (or elegiac) sonnet. It examines her radical experiments with the sonnet form and her remarkable ability to translate ideas, impressions, and prose sources swiftly and deftly into fluent verse. A supreme later example of poetic translation is ‘Fifty Quatrains’ in Wild Honey, written for Charles Ricketts, her male muse, and the recipient, like Edith Cooper, of many fine later sonnets. Ivor Treby’s invaluable selections include noteworthy sonnets by Bradley unpublished in their day, though other examples very likely remain in the archives.
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